


The Last Night of The Earth

by lottie_anne



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, Angst, Brief Violence, Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Instability, Mention of Past ED, Self-Harm, Stream of Consciousness, mention of drug overdose, nobody dies i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:21:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27764416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lottie_anne/pseuds/lottie_anne
Summary: One must always be intoxicated. Whether it be on wine, or poetry, or art, it is never worth the effort to go through life sober.-----Harry Styles can't seem to find his way out of temptation or his unhealthy coping mechanisms. Struggling with an uncooperative mind and plenty of intrusive thoughts, Harry is trying to be better, but he doesn't know if he's capable.WARNING: This depicts struggles with severe mental illness, substance abuse, unintentional self harm, past ED, and suicidal thoughts. Do not romanticise these issues.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	The Last Night of The Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thank you so much for choosing to read this! I hope you enjoy this piece as it is, once again, deeply personal to myself and my past. It is essentially the last 3 months of my life using other people as my vessel. This work is deeply reflective of my own experiences in life so far, and unless you are stable reading about the topics in the tags I recommend skipping this. It includes mentions of severe mental health issues, substance abuse, unintentional self harm, past eating disorders, and suicidal thoughts/attempts. Please be careful while reading and never romanticise these topics.
> 
> This fic is about internal struggles with severe mental health issues and as a harsh WARNING: includes my personal experiences with mental illness alongside extremely unhelathy coping mechanisms and responses.
> 
> Ultimately, I hope this serves as something others can relate to, though I know just how deeply individualized mental health struggles are. It is not my intention to exaggerate or incorrectly portray mental illness, because most of the experiences and emotions described here are my own. 
> 
> I'm so grateful that you've chosen to read this work and I'm sending every one of you my love. xx

The harsh spray of sea waves burst across Harry’s cheeks, dousing his pale skin with little icicles. His arms were stretched up towards the sky as he stood on the cliffside and dared himself to fall while the brittle grass whistled behind his back, calling him back towards safety and away from his thoughts. Harry had never stood so close to the end before- mere moments away from the frigid embrace of the sea. His blown out pupils pleaded to the Moon who was resting above his head, peering down upon the unfolding scene with a hint of sorrow behind her glowing expanse. 

_ Please. Please let me not be a coward any longer.  _

Harry screams out into the wind and twists his hands harshly in his hair, grasping the feathery strands so harshly he can hear them straining. The weight of his humanness is drawing his soul to the sea. Deep down he wants nothing more than to bury himself under waves and sand and thousands of years of lost artifacts, but he’s afraid. Afraid of himself or of the sea or of the end, it doesn’t matter. 

He’s a coward once more. 

With shaking hands he reaches into the pocket of his jacket and draws out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Fumbling against the wind he turns from the cliff and puts his back to the sea, escaping the truth of his own cowardice through his greatest skill- avoidance. Making his way across the field and towards his car, Harry lights the cig and takes a drag deep enough to burn the back of his throat and leave him hunched over and coughing into his jacket. Desperate now to escape the taunting cliff and the laughter in the wind he clambors into his car and finishes his smoke before searching for his discarded phone below his seat. He powers it on to find missed messages from Niall, Liam, Zayn, and  _ Louis _ . 

Louis was the one who had started their ridiculous “rivalry” even before Harry had decided he had a problem with the smaller lad. It wasn’t until Louis had called Harry a druggie that he’d truly gotten angry enough to fight back against Lou, words had flown then that Harry wished he could take back. But regardless, Louis had texted him, for arguably the first time ever, and Harry was terrified. If Louis was concerned then Harry would be forced to admit to himself that what he felt for Louis was not hatred but something warmer, and Harry despised warm emotions. 

He opens it anyways to find ‘ **hey dickhead, where did you go? You took off and we’re all a bit lost…’**

Harry closes the message immediately and tears another cigarette from its place, inhaling the smoke greedily as if it would run away from him. He never means to worry them and the guilt that suddenly begins creeping in is enough to have Harry reaching into his console in search of something stronger. He deserves the harsh pangs of guilt stabbing him and the frozen feelings in his bones and the numbness in his heart. Because what has he done to deserve anything good from life other than pissing every opportunity provided to him away. He can feel the pressure building behind his eyes in the few hot moments before the tears fall. Digging the heels of his palms into his eyes to stop it’s inevitable release he lets out a moan that bounces through the air around him until a staggering silence replaces it. The thing is, Harry knows he isn’t strong enough to handle his own life, and he drowns himself in extravagance and art and substances to distract from the constant stream of confusion. His fingers shake as he brings them up to run across the hollows of his cheeks, still damp from the sea spray, feeling along the bones jutting out from thinly stretched skin. Louis had very kindly once informed him that Harry reminded him of a Halloween store skeleton left in the sun too long. 

He shakes away thoughts of Louis and scrolls aimlessly through the rest of his messages without truly reading them, his focus only on the shaking of his fingers and the frosty breath curling out from between his chapped lips. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

Weekdays were usually a blur, a combination of missed classes, poetry scribbled on torn pages, and whatever else he could use to numb the ache in his chest. Weekends without fail result in Harry getting lost within a sea of drunken and stoned bodies, pressed up against each other as sweaty hands reach beneath his shirt to stroke his chest. Unknown characters press pills between his lips until his eyes roll back in his head and he stumbles around until falling onto a couch or someone he knows. Tonight, it’s Zayn, who is tripled in his vision but wearing a concerned frown on his lips and furrowed brows as he wipes the hair plastered to Harry’s forehead with sweat and possibly beer away from his eyes. 

“You sure know how to make a mess, Haz.” 

“Uuuurghahhhhh.” Is his dignified response. 

To his absolute dismay, Louis is the next face to make an appearance, also boasting a frown and carrying a glass of clear liquid, which Harry hopes is vodka. 

It is not. 

“Jesus, Haz.” Louis wrinkles his nose at him but loops his arm under Harry’s to carry him towards the car. “You should pay attention to what you’re taking.” 

“Pfffffffff Uhhh Oh god,” Is all Harry comes up with. 

He can see the two exchanging glances over his head but instead of confronting the situation he collapses into the leather seats of Zayn’s car and closes his eyes. The nausea is beginning to set in, and his only regret is that Louis is here, watching the de-evolution of Harry in real time, when Harry just desperately wants Louis to like him. No matter the situation, Harry is unbelievably good at taking things too far and then having everyone around him either concerned or angry. The day Liam broke up with his girlfriend, Harry dropped two tabs and had a trip so bad he threw up all over the back of Liam’s car before jumping out and running into the woods. They’d spent three hours searching for him until they found him lying halfway in a creek babbling about Stevie Nicks.

The Greek had a term for it: Hamartia. Literally, it means “to miss the mark,” but in literature it’s used to define a character’s downfall. The one trait that causes their demise. Harry thinks that maybe he’s built of  _ only _ fatal flaws. He’s pushy, got mood swings, is possessive, and absolutely has to be the center of attention at all times. If he isn’t, he’ll make himself the center by doing something drastic. 

He isn’t even aware that he’s crying until Louis is soothing him by running soft fingers along his jawline and whispering to him. He falls asleep before he can register Louis pressing a hesitant kiss to his forehead as Zayn watches from the rear view mirror. 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pain has an element of blankness, and at a certain point, it is unable to remember when it began, or if there was a day in which it did not exist. It has no future outside of itself, within its infinite expanse it contains only the past, which is enlightened to discover new periods of pain. 

The other thing about pain, is that it condenses time until one is no longer able to discern reality from their own perceived narrative, twisted by time and fear. 

Sometimes, Harry finds himself wandering through the empty streets in the early hours of the morning, smoking from battered packs of cigarettes, and fighting his deepest urges. He’s aware of the worry it causes his friends, but he’s not sure he cares. 

The thing is that he can’t even point out when these dramatic swings of character began to happen, the euphoria versus the despair. He can remember the time he ran through four lanes of traffic or stood in the center of a campfire or crashed his car through a fence to test who would visit him in the hospital. In the end, he understands that these things make no sense and that he’s being irrational but he can’t stop it. 

His father had told him the greatest minds of each generation are destroyed by madness, starving and hysterical, dragging themselves through frozen streets at dawn looking for an angry fix. When he was younger, everyone around him told Harry he was the future, a bright mind who would have been able to go on to do anything, absolutely anything with the mind he had. Then, at 15 he’d started to lose his great mind, drowning it in alcohol and weed and the closest substance or person available at that time. See, the substances blocked out the thoughts, the confusion of the labyrinth he was caught in- trapping him amongst the terrifying reality that his own mind wanted to witness his destruction. 

So, an angelheaded hippie, he wanders the streets, frantic for the ancient connection to the starry dynamo in the magical night. He is absorbed into his poverty and tatters and hollow-eyes, sitting up smoking through the darkness floating across the top of the city, contemplating, baring his brain up to heaven and witnessing the angels, staggering across the illuminated roofs. He’s merely passing through university with cool eyes and hallucinating tragedy and life sitting amongst the scholars of war- banished from academies for their insanity and obscene odes to the windows of the soul. 

He’d been 16 when he realized there was no use saving him; he had merely become another tragedy of the universe, a broken piece no longer fit for production. And if he was not fit to exist in the world that forged him, why should he try, why should anyone expect anything from the boy they had broken and then turned on for being broken. No, the world had chosen to abandon him and leave him amongst the other corpses of lost children that had been shattered from too much naivety clashing with too much reality. And broken he stumbles across the pages of his own poem, crashing and burning every three stanzas to remind his readers just how deeply he is irreparable, irredeemable. 

After that he could never get along with his family, he had been swallowed by the great monster of pain and lost between its ribs. They fought greatly because he had given everything up, his mind, his legacy, his future. 

He can still see the image of his mother’s face after he blew up at her and she screamed for him to never step foot in her home again. 

Scrambling to escape the memories he draws out another cigarette and smokes until his throat feels closed. 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The sun is out but Harry is cold. Wide eyes attempt to wake his sleeping mind, bouncing about beside the lively world. He supposes he must be dead, aloof from nature and the rest. 

Sometimes it gets so bad that  _ anything _ else, like watching a bird fly overhead, seems as great as an orchestral symphony. But then it is forgotten and he’s back again. He scribbles nonsense in his journal and underlines Bukowski until his eyes feel as if they’re bleeding and the pen runs out of ink. There’s a loneliness in the world so great that you can see it in the way the wind tosses the branches of the trees about, a place so mutilated by a lack of love that it cannot move on. 

And Harry is staring at his friends playing football and they’re laughing and they’re enjoying it but all he can feel is the aching hole in his chest reminding him that he is nothing but borrowed atoms suffering under the blows of the universe. Within the tired sunsets and the tired people, it takes a lifetime to die and yet no time at all. There is a place within his soul that can never be filled- a space- and even during the greatest times he can feel it more than ever. So in his best moments he endures the space and waits and waits and waits in that space, for a chance it can be filled. 

Caught up in the feeling of loss and in chewing the skin from his lips until it bleeds, he misses Louis jogging up to him with a sad smile adorning his slender face. 

“Oh, Haz,” he whispers, “I think that you will set yourself on fire before you realize that even you cannot conquer the sun.” 

And Harry just looks up at him from his seat on the fading, wood bench with slightly parted lips and his sadness carved out on his face. 

“Zayn says that we shall never see how old age looks on you,” he pauses to swallow the lump resting in his throat, “You are breaking my heart.” 

And Louis is the greatest weak spot that Harry has, so he shoves aside his poetry and opens his arms for his Louis to melt into and tuck himself beneath Harry’s arm. Tucked underneath him, Harry vows to protect Louis from the wind and the sea and the harsh blade of the world, and from himself. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry has attached himself to Louis, and he knows just how unsafe that is. But then Louis is there and he calls him ‘Haz’ and giggles at Harry’s stupid jokes and helps him after he’s gotten so fucked up he can’t see. 

Then Harry finds himself getting jealous; he despises when Zayn texts Louis little hearts or Liam takes him to get lunch or Niall gives him a wave and a smile in the hallway. He  _ knows _ it isn’t fair to hold Louis to that standard, and he  _ knows _ he shouldn’t take it out on Louis but he can’t  _ help _ it. 

He  _ hates _ when those people believe they have a claim over his Louis. It’s wrong, and possessive, and maybe abusive but Harry doesn’t know what else to do. 

Louis, to be fair, takes it rather well. He calms Harry down and assures him that no one else has a chance. They go to the park and eat little lunches and Harry reads him pretentious poetry until Louis is laughing and pulling the book away to pepper delicate kisses onto his cheeks. 

A true problem doesn’t arise until Harry punches Liam in a fit of jealous rage. He’s sober, staying true to the promise he made Louis to try to get better, which means he’s alert. Leaning against the wall of a crowded party, his shoes dangerously close to a sticky puddle of mystery goo and shaking hands guarding his cigarette, he spots Liam and Louis dancing. Zayn follows his line of sight and is reaching out to grab Harry’s arm but he’d already stormed halfway across the room. 

The rest is a blur, but he remembers Louis had slapped him and begun to scream, Liam had been bleeding, and Niall and Zayn had dragged Harry out to the biting chill of the outside air. He’d dropped to the ground then, tears running down his face as he digs the blunt ends of his fingernails into his scalp. There’s something warm dripping down his face and his two friends are holding his shoulders too harshly. Scrambling, fighting, screaming, he has to get away. 

Suddenly, he’s breaking free of their hold and stumbling down the road, his feet gathering speed as he trips. There’s sweat dripping down the back of his neck and soaking the neck of his shirt, but all he can think is to run, run, run. 

His mind is blank until he brings his foot down again and a stinging pain shoots through his toes and up his calf. He cries out as he crumples to the dirt beside the road. He lets himself fall then, curling into himself and sobbing into the dusty land below his cheek. The wind bites at his exposed skin, turning it pale and lifeless under the caustic eye of the moon. 

And then he’s gasping, he can’t find his heartbeat or his breath and he’s drowning; sinking below the dirt to be finally swallowed by the earth and cast into the pits of his own despair. It wasn’t the dying that bothered him, it was the loss. He was tired. A kind of tired that weighed so heavily on his soul that any additional pressure sent him into a tailspin breakdown that carved another chunk of his soul out of his hands. 

_ Out of control. Harry you’re out of control and I never want to see you step foot here again. _

He screams at his mind, fingernails digging into the skin on his arms, tearing and ripping to make the pain appear somewhere else. Anywhere else. Blood runs down his arms, dripping into the dirt below, feeding the universe the very core of his suffering. 

He inwardly pinches himself for his dramatics. 

_ Get a grip. Get a fucking grip, Styles. Sure, you may have just ruined every good relationship left in your life and assaulted one of your best friends, but…  _

There is no but, the situation is Hell. 

His tears are slowing, which means the numbness has begun to set in. The terrifying ache is no longer pounding against his chest but slowly retreating behind his chest and his breathing is slowing. He can feel the apathy setting in, the realization that he’s ruined everything no longer blinding but fading. It should hurt, he knows it should, but he can’t feel it. 

His phone is ringing from somewhere deep in his jacket pocket and he scrambles to find it, his hands knocking his cigarettes loose and he tries desperately to catch them all before they tumble to the ground. He loses. Sighing in defeat he picks one up and lights it before grasping his phone and dragging it out, illuminating his haggard face. 

It’s Liam. 

His hands are shaking so badly he can’t make out the words on the screen anymore, shuddering breaths escape his lips as he raises it to his ear. 

**‘H-Hello?’**

**‘Haz! Thank god, where are you, we’re all worried. Lou is losing it.’** He can hear someone arguing in the background, the high pitched voice no stranger to his ears. 

‘ **Li. Li I’m so fucking sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.’**

Liam cuts him off,  **‘Haz buddy, I promise it’s okay. I’m not hurt that bad, it’s not broken. We’re worried, where are you?’**

In the background, he can hear someone whispering, “ _ Of course I know that, it’s- something’s not right with him but it’s HAZ.” _

He seems out of breath and Harry knows he’s lying. He hurt Liam and Liam was  _ bleeding _ all because he couldn’t control the voices in his own brain. 

**‘Okay, your location is on, don’t move Haz. We’re coming.”**

\--------------------------------------------------------------------

Someone told him once that it must be a blessing to feel his emotions this deeply, but Harry thinks it must be a curse. Retribution of some kind for a shitty past life. He must have kicked some orphans or been a bank robber or something because he can’t think of what else could warrant this kind of pain. Sometimes he wants to scream at the sky and demand answers as to why he’s been forced to carry this weight. He isn’t strong enough, he knows he’s not. So the universe demanding it of him while others expect him to find some way to be successful is wholly unfair. 

He’s heard the rumors, whispers about him across campus. An alarmingly beautiful yet violently crazy enigma. He does too many drugs and he drinks too hard and sometimes when people slide their gold clad fingers across his chest he snaps and begins to scream. 

It’s like he’s living in a glass cage in which everyone can see him and judge him based on a small, metal plaque detailing his existence in four lines. They must think he lives in another dimension, with only his madness and missing soul as comfort. 

His parents used to dress him in pretty garments and stroke his cheeks and showcase him to friends and relatives just so they could prove how great they were at parenting. Adults would run fingers across his body, studying him and proclaiming his beauty and his brain. He wasn’t real, he mustn't be. He was a toy cast down to be used up by the universe and now that they have broken him they no longer want him. Someone must find it to be a tragedy, but he supposes he deserves it. 

Harry is trapped in a loop, a loop of self destruction that forces him to ruin every good thing that’s ever been given to him. His friends will run away eventually, they all leave after getting what they want from him. But he thinks maybe the loss of his current friends will break him. He knows that when they do go, because they will, that will be the day he kills himself. 

He is no longer afraid of death, the great peaceful sleep that he wishes to embrace with all of his heart. Dying must be peaceful, to lay underneath the soft earth as the breeze toustles the grass above your resting eyes and your soul can float peacefully amongst the wildflowers. He craves it, a sense of peace from the chaos raging war inside his mind. He wants to be at peace. A rest from the tempest tossing him aimlessly about the sea of humanity. A rest from the doubt and fear. For the sun to find his face, the light to find his heart, the song to find his story, and the smile to find his face. Life is finite, and his storms have raged too long for even winter must surrender spring. And be at peace. 

But he remains here, because of the way Niall laughs and hugs him every time they meet. Because of the way Liam grins and claps him on the back while asking if he’s been getting sleep. Because of the way Zayn smiles and passes his blunt and wonders if Harry has been getting out enough. Because of the way Lou blushes when they meet and presses soft kisses to his lips and holds his hand while looking at Harry like he helps the Moon climb to her resting place every night. 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry likes storms, they’re wonderful. The way the skies thrash and scream, a reminder that even the skies are burdened with the weight of forgotten dreams. 

It’s calming, Rain has a predictable pattern, the brain processes it as a calming, non-threatening noise. Even when it’s not raining he finds himself playing soft storm noises to calm the noise behind his eyes. It helps to find a distraction. 

For a while, he found his distraction in alcohol and then drugs. If he drank enough he could blackout and not be present for a while, it takes away the burden of responsibility. Then, when he popped pills to relax he could feel the slow loss of movement in the way it relaxes his muscles until he’s just laying there, drifting amongst the stars. He’d done every drug offered to him in every situation. It wasn’t until six or seven truly bad trips mixed with stolen medications and frightening visions that he began to scare himself. And no amount of comfort food the morning after can alter the images his mind produced while floating. 

The concerned stares and worried expressions as he took them got too much, the pity of his image overwhelming as people would ask him if he needed rehab. And besides, he promised Louis. He can’t deny Louis anything. 

He’s currently stretched out on a dorm mattress with Louis pressed gently into his side, arms curled around each other as Lou dozes under the sun rays peeking through the window shades. He’s truly beautiful, with his gentle features and smaller frame. Harry wants to protect him, and at first he believed the best way to do that was to push him away, but Louis makes him want to be better. He makes him want to try to live. 

For the longest time, Harry had a fantasy tucked away in the back folds of his mind. A little cottage by the sea, worn by time and sea salt. He would hide away here and seclude himself from the rest of society, he’s tired of expectations and morals and the realization that he is not stable enough to succeed here amongst the rest of humanity. So he wants to run, and hide away in his own little corner of the universe. He dreamed that he would stay there for a few years, in love with the sea and the wind and the sky. Until he grows tired of routine and the heavy weight of his own soul and then, then he would be brave enough to spread his arms and fall gently into the waves. 

He has burned for long enough, the modern embodiment of Icarus, as Zayn likes to call him. His time to fly is drawing to a close and he can only wonder when the sun shall decide to burn his wings. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry had found a little bench hidden away in the back corner of campus, and when he needed to escape he would make his way back to his worn little bench and scrawl furiously in his journal. This journal recorded his darkest moments and his deepest thoughts, the ones that have Louis pleading for Harry to seek help and have the rest of his friends staring on sadly. 

He wishes he wrote the way he thought: obsessively, incessantly, and with maddening hunger. He would write to the point of suffocation and into nervous breakdowns. Pages unfurling like tentacles into abysmal nothing. He would write about Louis a lot more than he should. 

More often, however, he allows his rage to take control while writing. He dictates page after page to his past and family and traumas, refusing to slow down despite the fact he knows he’s repeating what has already been written. Wounds are supposed to heal with time, but when he spends every day picking open the scabs and examining the scars he doubts he’s given them much chance. He plays with the rings on his fingers as he observes the birds hopping about on the ground, searching for something to bring back to their nest. He wishes he was a bird, so he could fly away, run away, escape. 

But he’s stuck. Rooted in place like an ancient tree that’s begun to sink into the earth. 

Louis finds him here. He walks up like Harry’s saviour, waving a flashlight to clear away the foggy darkness dampening his mind. He doesn’t say anything, just sits down beside Harry while resting his cheek on his shoulder, closing his eyes, and humming the notes of a long forgotten melody. 

Harry loves him. It hits him like a train barreling off course, or a knife piercing his stomach, or an airplane smashing into the sea. He is in love with Louis. 

He should have realized this when he found himself handing over the scariest pieces of his soul for Louis to examine and spilling his secrets from between cracked and fading lips. He has given Louis everything and he never expected anything in return but Louis gave it anyway. He gave Harry his heart knowing just how battered Harry was by the forces of time and loves him anyway. 

“Lou,” He whispers into the whistling sky, “I love you.” 

And he feels the smile spreading against his shoulder. 

“I love you too.” 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gatsby believed in the green light, that orgasmic future that year by year recedes before us. It eludes us, but that is no matter because tomorrow we will run faster and stretch our arms further. We beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past. 

Someone had told Harry once that his soul was a feral cathedral, a river running through it, where forgotten lovers’ wounded sonnets were etched into the walls and lost love was found again. Lost in his own stupor of failure and pain, he’d had no idea how to respond. But now, as he finds himself trying once more, for the sake of his friends and his Louis, he believes he is beginning to understand. 

Of course, he fucks it up. All it takes is seven little white pills and he ruins all of his progress, all of his work. The quiet numbness no longer comes to him gently, it comes raging over the hill and slams him backwards into the ground. His cheek is wedged into biting concrete, his hands shaking at his sides, his eyes are rolling around his head so wildly he can’t make out the world in front of him. His stomach is spinning circles, and it sloshes emptily against his sides, warning him of an upheave of bile and bitter pills. He’s sweating against the pavement, lying uselessly as the night breeze tugs at his hair like it’s trying to pull him to his feet. All he can do is moan against the shocks of pain and terror ripping through his bones and leaving him writhing. 

Liam finds him. He’s been reduced to crying on the ground and wallowing in his own failure. His favorite vice has rejected him and now he has nothing. Liam is crying too, but he carefully lifts Harry and carries him to his car. He takes them back to the flat they share with Zayn and lays him on the couch. 

He can hear frantic voices and someone crying before Zayn is leaning into view, “You’re lucky. You’re out of the worst of it.” 

But his expression is disappointment and anger and sadness and something akin to expectation. It burns Harry’s soul worse than the pills did. 

He sleeps for a full day before waking up coherently. Louis is sleeping next to him, but his back is facing Harry. Looking up to the ceiling, he wills the tears to go away. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

They don’t blame him, of course they don’t. 

_ You’re an addict, Harry.  _

He doesn’t know if it’s worse that they expected this of him. 

His father calls him a few hours later, inquiring after his “investment” in Harry’s education. Which is obviously not going well. Sometimes Harry lets the anger at his situation take over. They groomed him, crafted him delicately so that he would be the perfect image of a successful student. He was supposed to go into Law or the medical field or something great. He had once had the ability to make something worthy of himself, but now he is a failure. 

It’s cruel, the way the world set him up. They praised him his entire childhood and made sure he knew just how worthless he was on his own. Then they released him into the reality of the world and tore him to pieces. How could they expect him to handle it? How could they throw all of these things at him after 18 years of perfect behaviour and expect him to be able to do well. They had abandoned them, and he had shown them the true extent of the damage that had been done. 

In the end he was just a boy. A human. He was intoxicated on the idea that love and his own glory would push him through, but he had burned up. And now just a pile of ashes and some broken soul, he has to make up the difference. 

We are completely and utterly alone as far as we know in this infinite space and we don’t know what, if anything, happens to us. The truth was, in those moments after, when sobriety is beginning to peek through the blinds of his visions and reality comes settling back on his shoulders, he feels the greatest connection to the rest of the universe. This undeniable synchronous  _ feeling _ in which he is one with every other young person clawing their way through the dirt thrown on top of their pre-dug graves. 

Surviving is struggling, and hope makes that struggle easier. Harry thinks he’s found that hope, in Niall and Liam and Zayn and his Louis. Because even when he fucks up beyond repair they work through it with him. Perhaps they do not forgive him, and maybe that is just, but they help him. They have not abandoned him. 

He used to believe that the greatest ideal on earth is human love. But he is beginning to see that not all love defines him. His parents never loved him, and his relationship with them will never be what it should be, but their anger at themselves does not translate to his worth as a human. Louis with his unconditional love and unwillingness to abandon Harry defines him. His connections to his friends and their unflaking acceptance that he is  _ trying _ and that he is growing is what defines him. Because given the option he would be a better person, not for himself, but for them because they deserve that. 

He had surrendered himself to events and was lost in them, the least little thing was enough to carry him down the stream of eternity. He was forlorn like a child and experienced like an old man, he was crude and sorrowful and superficial and lost. But life is only interesting if life is wide. And Harry had made his life wide, wider than most. 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------

He’s sober for three weeks before he’s tempted again. Niall had dragged them all to a celebration party for the end of the term, and Harry found himself surrounded by temptation. To his credit, Niall turned around and asked if he’d wanted to leave but Harry didn’t want to look like the one who made his friends abandon their cause, so he stayed. Louis is laughing with Niall, both drunk, when an old friend offers Harry snow. It would be so easy, Louis isn’t looking and Zayn is off grabbing water for the rest of them. He could choose peace and get away with it. 

“Sorry, Nick. I promised Lou I’d stop.” 

“Shit! Never thought I’d see the day where you kick the habits. I’m proud of you, Harry!” and then he’s shouldering through the crowd trying to get rid of the rest of his packet. 

There’s a tugging feeling in his gut but he swipes his hair back with shaking hands and goes to find Lou. 

The rest of the night is an internal battle for Harry, as person after person tries to pass unknown substances into his hands and between his lips. Now, Louis is watching with sad eyes, but he never takes the choice away from Harry. He always allows Harry to have full control over his decisions, because he knows that’s something he never had before. 

His entire childhood was controlled by his parents from his clothing down to which bus he was allowed to ride to school. Harry had never had the luxury to make his own choices and he went where he was told and did exactly what they said step by step. So being thrown out into the world quite suddenly ensured that he never made a smart decision on his own. He knew it was unhealthy, that was obvious, but he was immensely grateful that no one tried to take that choice away from him. 

Sitting on an old couch in a random apartment with his Louis held tightly in his arms, Harry thinks of how happy the little stone is that rambles along the road alone. It doesn’t care for careers or fears or worries. Independent as the sun, it glows alone and fulfills absolute decree in such casual simplicity. To him, everything is so deeply complex. There is not a situation in this world that has come easily to him, and he is envious of those for whom it has. He thinks of the people with happy childhoods who grew up to have happy school experiences then found a happy job and a happy family. How did they do so? How did they pass through so easily and so carefree. It’s difficult for him to imagine a world not dictated by the thin blade of trauma and illness and danger. A world in which you don’t put yourself into threatening situations just to feel the heartbeat pounding against your rib cage as you wait for retribution to rain down upon you. A world free from all of this dirt, and chaos, and sin. He didn’t believe it existed. But every so often he meets someone who’s entire life has come simply and freely. Never taking too much and never pushing their boundaries. He cannot grasp that. 

For there is a loneliness that only exists within the mind. Where the loneliest moment is when someone is watching their entire life crumble before them and all they can do is stare at it numbly. The notion that most people on earth have never experienced such profound and never-ending despair confuses him. And he is left to ponder why he drew the short stick. 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

Hell is crowded, but one only ever lives through it alone. And you can’t tell anyone that you’re in hell because they’ll think you’re crazy. But truthfully, being crazy is being in hell and being sane is being in hell too. Those who escape hell will never speak about it, about the fire or the shell-shock or the broken faith. Nothing much bothers them after that, nothing can come close to touching the pain your own mind can inflict upon you. They shall insist that they’re fine they’re fine they’re fine. Once you’ve been to hell and come back that is enough, it is the most silent celebration known to man. The creaks of an old wooden floor, the moon at midnight, the wings of tired old butterflies, an empty car lot, or a scratched up window can make you happier than the greatest gifts ever given. Once you’ve been to hell and back. 

Harry thinks he’s been, but he’s never sure if he’s made it back. Every time he feels as if the lows can’t get lower they do. The bottom of the floor always collapses out from under him and he plummets another hundred feet below the dirt. Deeper and deeper into the inescapable abyss that holds him captive and scratches steadily at his skin. 

His life is his life, and he doesn’t want to let it be beaten into submission. He knows there are ways out, others have found them. They’ve found the faint light that chases away the darkness and the numbness. They’ve been offered chances by the gods and they have known them and grabbed them for all they are worth. 

Pain is absurd simply because it exists. Nothing more. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry is beyond grateful for Louis. Louis who spends nearly every day with him and when he can’t he makes sure to text and text and text. It may be unhealthy but then again his other coping mechanisms are worse, and he is secretly overjoyed that Louis loves him as deeply as he loves Louis. 

Louis who hung fairy lights in Harry’s room so that “ _ even while you sleep the light can get in.” _ And Louis who brings flowers to twist in Harry’s hair and paints his nails and steals his sweaters. Louis who has seen the deepest depravity of Harry’s soul and loves him anyway. Louis who is willing to love him despite their disparate personalities with his gentle affection. 

Harry has never loved anyone like he loves Louis, he is certain he would kill for him. He believes that deep down Louis is afraid sometimes, of the anger that burns through Harry in his lowest points and the euphoria that swims through his mind and clouds his vision at his highest. It’s definitely cause to be concerned and Harry would never blame him if he walked away. But he knows it would break him. Louis is the best thing that ever happened to him and he is unwilling to let the dark world get ahold of his boy and tear him up as it did him. 

But the love he feels for him is blinding, it’s a pressure behind his rib cage and a constant reminder that there are beautiful things in life. And when Harry goes on a rampage and destroys his art and his poetry and rips apart his books before drowning himself in liquor or pills Louis always comes back. He knows it hurts his boy’s soul and he wishes desperately he could save Louis from himself, but just as he is on that precipice above the sea, he is a coward. He will never be strong enough to push Louis away and he drinks every moment with his love like it may be his last. The miracle of Lou’s love is not lost on him. When others see them and comment on the imbalance of personality and the things Louis must deal with he is aware. It burns behind his eyelids every moment he closes them and he feels such a heavy guilt that he is forced to do something,  _ anything _ , to relieve the pressure. So he drives forks into his hands or tears open hidden packets of white powder until Louis finds him laying on the ground, a mixture of despair and anger at the world. 

Louis though, knows that Harry would never dare to hurt him. Louis is his muse, his inspiration, the truest love he will ever find in the world. And he cherishes him like nothing else. They are a package deal,  _ Harry Styles and his boy _ . 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

There is something to be said about no sleep, no food, and a stomach full of drugs. They all knew he wasn’t strong enough to stay away. They won’t forgive him for it, he’s aware of that, but they don’t say anything to him. And that’s all he can ask, is for them to allow him to be. To exist within his own bubble of genius and art and love. 

He no longer pays attention to the end of the world for it has ended for him many times over and began again the next day. He asks for no mercy and no miracles. Harry is well aware of his place. 

Lighting a cigarette, he leans back against the cold stone of the rooftop’s edge, remembering dead friends and dead days. So much has gone by for most of us, especially the young because they’re just losing their beginning, and now have the rest to go. All we ever think about is lost loves that went so hard it brought us to the edge, people so hypnotic they destroyed us before we could wake up. 

He can remember the lines of an old poem: 

_ the best often die by their own hand _

_ just to get away, _

_ and those left behind _

_ can never quite understand _

_ why anybody  _

_ would ever want to  _

_ get away _

_ from  _

_ them  _

  * _Charles Bukowski_



He would be lying if he claimed he didn’t wish to go. To leave it all behind and escape to the sweet relief of the wind in the grass six feet above his resting eyes. But then he sees Louis curled up in their bed, waiting for him to come to bed still. He sees Louis in the garden singing to himself as he waits for Harry to leave the studio. He sees Louis and he knows that he will never be bold enough to abandon this life no matter the shadows hiding in the corners of his mind. Because Louis is enough to keep them at bay. He grows jealous of the wind for it gets to kiss Louis’s lips when he is too cowardly. He grows jealous of the clouds for they get to bask upon his beauty every moment of every day when Harry must part from him. He is jealous of the world for getting to witness a piece of Louis’s golden glory when Harry wants to keep him all for himself. 

But he does not deserve Louis, he knows. For even when Louis cries and begs he still goes back to the pills and the silence they allow. He still runs back to the same old habits that disappoint all of his friends. The prospect of losing them frightens him so deeply he grows paralyzed and rips at his skin with blunt nails until he feels the familiar drops of blood sliding across his skin. 

Sometimes Harry gets so sad he can hardly feel it anymore. Sometimes he gets so sad for so long he hardly knows anymore. Dying begins to look good but dying won’t come. It’s just the walls and the streets and the people dressed in clothes, the people talking. It’s like the oldest movie that refuses to change, and it’s just him sitting, waiting, waiting, waiting. 

  
And the chaos is better than the waiting, feeling  _ something _ is better than feeling nothing. So he turns to the pills and the coke and the same old disappointed look in Louis’s eyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you were able to stomach and possibly enjoy!(?) 
> 
> To preface, I know Harry sucks ass, he was written as a reflection of my own person and my own actions/choices, he was made to be disliked because he is unable to choose to get better regardless of the people around him. In the end, his relationships with the rest of the boys fade to the background as his love for Louis grows, which is a reference to my favorite person (some of you probably understand!;) ) and how that dynamic affects relationships. This work was a reflection on the past three months of my life, and is a way for me to work through things, thank you. 
> 
> Please let me know if you liked, hated, double hated this work or if you have anything you'd like to yell at me for, the comments are always open:) 
> 
> love you all xx mwah mwah mwah


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